


The Thing About Pictures...

by horatiofrog



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Family, Friendship, Gen, Photographs, a picture is more than a thousand words, a picture tells a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 17:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16351121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horatiofrog/pseuds/horatiofrog
Summary: When a senior assignment threatens to cast Justin aside, Clay comes up with a novel way to show that pictures tell more than just a story.





	The Thing About Pictures...

**Author's Note:**

> Content notice: there is mention of events that occur in my story "Fuck the Lions, Fear the Sheep." While I think the story's worth a look, it's not entirely necessary to have read it to enjoy this work.

Justin Foley sighed, rolling his eyes at the announcement plastered to his locker.  Pulling the offending pink paper from its taped perch, he scrunched it into a tiny ball and made a lazy throw into the battered trash bin in the middle of plaza of lockers.

“Nice throw,” a welcome voice said.  Justin turned to see Zach and Alex coming up the hallway.  Zach mimed making a free throw shot from the three-point line.  “What was that, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Justin said, brushing it off.  “Some stupid thing for graduation.”

Alex fished the flyer out of the trash, attempting to smooth it out with his good hand.  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.  Really?”

“I know, right?  Like anyone wants to see that shit.”

Zach stared at his friends, puzzled.  “See what?”

“Dude, do you _ever_ listen to the announcements in the morning?  Or look around you once in a while?”  Alex motioned around the hallway, where the same flyer hung in various shades of the pastel rainbow.  “Some idiot genius from yearbook decided that getting the seniors to submit a baby picture was a good idea…”

“Why?”  Zach seemed genuinely perplexed.  “I mean, I got my senior ones done.  Mom insisted on spending a small fortune on them, for what I dunno…”

“Yeah, me too,” Justin said.  “Matt insisted Clay and I have good ones too.  Why would they want a fucking picture of me looking like…”

“An overcooked screaming potato?” Alex chimed in helpfully.

“Yeah, like that.”  Justin chewed his lip.  “I mean, come on.”

“Still, I hear they’re making it a requirement of some kind.  Trying to get creative or something in yearbook class.” Alex leaned heavily against his cane.  “Tyler would have a fit.”

Justin shrugged.  He hadn’t really gotten to know Tyler Down that well, the whole thing with Hannah’s tapes aside.  He’d seemed like a kid who’d gotten the short straw one too many times, for sure, but the two hadn’t floated in the same circles much.

“Yeah, he would,” a voice said behind the trio.  They spun to see Miles Christopher standing behind them, pulling a thick history text out of his locker.  “Which is why it’s an A/V project.  Mr. Fives wants to do some Google Slides thing, run it on a loop during graduation.  We’re stealing the senior pictures from yearbook, but we needed something else to run with it.  And, for the record, I’d have just done a few nice candids along with the senior shots.  Make a nice collage of formal and informal stuff.”

“Miles, I will give you $200 to fake my picture,” Zach said. 

The sophomore’s eyes widened a little.  “$200?  Your pictures that bad, Zach?  Lemme guess, all of them leave nothing to the imagination?” A little smirk crossed a dusky face.

“No!  It’s just…my mom will wanna pick mine, and yes, it will suck.  So, $200?”

Justin and Alex stared expectantly.  “Whatever Zach paying, I’ll pay half as much to have mine done too,” Alex said.  “Cash flow problems.  You understand.”

Smiling, Miles shook his head.  His glasses glinted a ray of fluorescent light from the overheads above them.  “Sorry.  Half the sports teams offered $500, and the shop kids threatened to make my equipment disappear.  Fives is serious.  So is administration, apparently.”  He shrugged, his flannel shirt shrugging along with his shoulders.

_Fuck,_ Justin thought silently.  “Well, it was worth a shot,” he said aloud.

“Sure was,” Miles said.  “Could have gotten college paid for, just in that alone.”

* * *

 

When Justin got home, he found Clay sitting at the dining room table poring over a bunch of old photo albums.  “Getting it over with?” he asked his brother.

“Yeah.”  Clay shook his head slowly, picking up a picture of what looked like a much younger Matt sleeping on a couch in the living room.  A tiny Clay lay on top of his chest, curled into a little ball.  The teen smiled a little half-smile, flicking the photo between his fingers.  “If only there weren’t so _many_ …”

Justin’s spirits sank a little.  He plastered a smile on and began to paw at the pile of photos Clay had scattered on the table.  “Really, Jensen?” he laughed, pulling up a picture of Clay dressed as a pumpkin for what looked like his first or second Halloween.  “A pumpkin?”

“Hey, that was cool back then.  I think.”  Clay took the picture from Justin and smiled.  “I think I was this for two years.  I don’t remember though.  Dad said he took me all over the neighborhood and even on campus that year.  It rained, I guess.  And there was apparently enough candy to last through Thanksgiving.”

Justin smiled at the story.  Then his face fell.  “At least you _have_ pictures.  And stories.”

Clay turned and looked at his brother.  “Oh, fuck.  You mean you…really?”

The youngest member of the Jensen household shrugged, trying to play it off.  “We couldn’t afford to _eat_ sometimes, let alone do pictures.  And Amber…well, does she really seem like a picture kind of person to you?”

“Still, not even the one from the hospital?  Wait – you _were_ born in a hospital, right?  Not some weird thing like in a car or an elevator?”

“Dumbass.  Yes, a hospital.  Says so on my birth certificate.”  He went upstairs to their room and pulled the document out of its hiding place in his sock drawer.  Justin thrust the paper at Clay.  “See?  Mercy Hospital.  February 21, 2000.”

Clay studied the document.  “Hey, Mom and Dad’s names are on this.”  He pointed at the spaces where the parents’ names were listed.

“Yeah, that happened with the adoption.  Why?  That a problem?”

“No,” Clay said, shaking his head.  “Not at all.  I just…I guess I thought there’d be, like, some kind of addition to it, or something?”

“Lainie explained it.  She said that when someone’s adopted, it basically resets the parent thing.  So, technically, it’s like _they_ had me, rather than Amber and…whatever the hell my birth father’s name is.”

“Oh.”  Clay fell silent, the gears in his head slowly turning.

“Why?”  Justin’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “You’re thinking something, I can tell.  What kind of dumbass thing are you gonna get me into now, Clay?”

“Nothing.”  The elder Jensen child closed the photo album in his hands and pulled out his cell phone.  “Hey, Miles?  Clay.  Listen, so could you meet me at my place, about seven?  Yeah, it’s the photo thing.  I want to run an idea past you…”

* * *

 

“Now _this_ is an idea I like,” Alex said.

“For sure,” Justin said.  “Nice job, Miles.”

“Oh, don’t thank me.  This was all Clay Jensen.”  The younger teen smiled.  “He pointed out to Fives that not everyone had access to a baby picture, like Justin.”

“Wait… _what?_ ” Justin’s face turned an interesting shade of pink.

“Well, he suggested instead that the seniors have to submit an interesting candid shot – something that says a lot about them.  Something the senior shots and fancy photographers miss.”  Miles pulled up a goofy shot of Clay hard at work on a piece of art, his headphones firmly plastered on his ears, a mock-serious look to his face as he gripped a bright blue colored pencil.  In another shot was a picture of the comic he was working on.  “Says a lot about Clay, huh?”

Justin studied the sample slide.  It _did_ say a lot about his confident, sometimes too-serious brother.  Underneath all that was a really fun, creative guy who wanted to express himself.  He flicked through the slideshow to see one of Alex playing his saxophone, his cane standing sentry near the seat the musician occupied.  It told Justin that despite all of Alex’s struggles, he was still the kid who liked jazz and making music.  Jessica had submitted a beautiful picture of herself sitting on the indoor bleachers, hard at work on a bunch of homework and near some handmade banners promoting the Black Student Union group she had helped to found.  Zach had submitted one of him leaning against the emerald-green Jeep he’d bought after selling his Audi to help rescue Clay, dressed in his new dark-blue basketball uniform with light blue trim and lettering, showing his transformation from follower to more willing leader.

“You like?  These are just the first ones,” Miles continued. 

“Yeah, I like it,” Justin said confidently.  He slipped the kid a couple of shots – one of him working the basketball court, his new family cheering him on from the front of the bleachers.  The other was of him and Clay, tossing random shit at each other in their bedroom.  The smiles on both boys’ faces was enough to light up a football field. “These do?”

“Oh, yeah.  I can make this work, for sure.  Nice shots.”

“Thanks,” Justin said.  He felt that those pictures told the most important part of his story – the one where the lonely, neglected, fucked-up kid finally got a happy ending too.  _Better than a stupid baby picture any day, for sure._

**Author's Note:**

> Having been the yearbook staff for a special education school, I've see students in predicaments like Justin's. That's why I came up with a solution closer to Clay's -- so every graduating student could see themselves as they were, regardless of their circumstances. It's a thing the school still continues to do to this day.


End file.
